Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Former US Ambassador to the
United Nations, John Bolton, believes that "[The White House's foreign
policy] initiatives truly reflect Obama's view of America's international
role. His is a world of rhetoric and
talk, not power."

The coming crash of U.S.
diplomacy is not idle speculation about a remote future. Our declining prestige
is already apparent globally; when all three Middle East negotiations fail
conclusively, America's influence will fall further. Friends and adversaries
alike are recalibrating their policies accordingly, particularly because the
underlying causes of the three impending failures will spell trouble and
misfortune elsewhere.

Obama's ongoing failures could
have been avoided. A less ideological, more realistic and clear-eyed leader
would comprehend American power and interests, knowing how to use the former to
protect the latter, rather than making Obama's basic mistakes.

Obama's first error: misreading
your adversary. There was never any chance Iran could be negotiated out of a
nuclear weapons capability it has pursued for nearly 30 years. Efforts during
the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations demonstrated how Iran
deftly uses negotiations to gain political legitimacy, buy time to continue
work on its nuclear program and evade international punishment. Hassan
Rouhani followed precisely this playbook as Iran's chief nuclear
negotiator 10 years ago. He is doing so again today as Iran's president.

The second error: not knowing who
your adversaries are. Obama argued for three years that Russia shared his
objective of a peaceful transition from the Assad regime in Syria to something
else. This was never true. Moscow's support for Assad (as well as Iran's,
directly and through Hezbollah) guaranteed he would only depart feet first. The
U.S. could either have aided Syria's opposition or tackled the problem's root
cause: the mullahs' regime in Tehran. Obama chose to do neither. His
equivocation regarding Syria's chemical weapons program has provoked giggles or
dismay at White House weakness.

The third error: not knowing who
your friends are. The Palestinians lack legitimate governing institutions
capable of hard decisions, including making perilous concessions and
compromises, and overcoming resistance by Hamas and other terrorists.
Without such institutions, no long-term solution is possible. Negotiating with
the Palestinian Authority has less substance than negotiating with a
hologram. Perversely, however, Obama treats Israel as the problem.

At the center of this inept president’s foreign policy is the
misguided belief that the reason America has adversaries is because it has
allies.

With red lines painted here, there and everywhere backed up
only by bluster and no balls whatsoever, it won’t be long before we have only
adversaries and no allies anywhere in the world. With this man sitting behind the Resolute
Desk, our very existence grows ever more perilous.

Monday, February 24, 2014

I’m going to begin this post by
echoing the words of University of Tennessee Law Professor Glenn Reynolds AKA Instapundit:

“Though people have taken to the streets from Egypt,
to Ukraine,
to Venezuela to
Thailand,
many have wondered whether Americans would ever resist the increasing
encroachments on their freedom. I think they've begun.”

For 700 years, Britain’s rule
over Ireland had been resisted by attempts at rebellion and revolution, all of
which ended in failure. As a result, what
emerged in the early 20th Century was a strategy known as “Irish
Democracy.”

If you are unfamiliar with the term
“Irish Democracy”, it is a way of shedding the yoke of oppression and injustice
through the strategy of stubborn disregard for authority. Its clearest expression is credited to Michael
Collins, the Irish leader, who is purported to have told angry crowds going
head-to-head with London: “We have a
weapon more powerful than any in the whole arsenal of the British Empire. That weapon is our refusal. There is one weapon that the British cannot
take away from us: we can ignore them.”

The growing cancer of cronyism
and corruption in our federal government needs a healthy dose of stubborn
disregard for authority. The sweat,
sacrifice and courage of our Founding Fathers established a nation of laws not
of men.

Five days after The World’s Most
Dangerous Community Organizer defeated John McCain in 2008, Valerie Jarrett appeared on Meet The Press. Jarrett, then Co-Chair for
the Obama Transition Team, was interviewed by Tom Brokaw who asked this of
Jarrett, “What’s the working model? Are
you going to be a shadow government or just a very interested spectator off to
the side?”

Jarrett’s answer was jarring:

“There is one president at a time,
President Bush is still president. He
has graciously invited President-elect Obama to the White House tomorrow to
begin real conversations about transition.
So we respect that. He will be
the president until January 20th.
However, given the daunting challenges that we face, it’s important that
President-elect Obama is prepared to take power and begin to rule Day One.” [Emphasis mine]

One month before the general
election, while on the campaign trail in Columbia, MO, candidate Obama said, "Now,
Mizzou, I just have two words for you tonight: five days. Five days. After
decades of broken politics in Washington, and eight years of failed policies
from George W. Bush, and 21 months of a campaign that's taken us from the rocky
coast of Maine to the sunshine of California, we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States
of America.” [Emphasis mine]

"In five days, you can turn
the page on policies that put greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street before
the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street. In five days, you can
choose policies that invest in our middle class, and create new jobs, and grow
this economy, so that everyone has a chance to succeed, not just the CEO, but
the secretary and janitor, not just the factory owner, but the men and women on
the factory floor."

Yep. This Oval Office is embroiled in provocative
controversies scandals involving the troubled rollout of the health care
website, the Internal Revenue Service’s scrutiny of politically active conservative
groups, the National Security Agency’s massive yottabytes
collection of Americans’ phone records and the 2012 attack on the U.S.
diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, leaving four Americans murdered.

America, God love her, is
increasingly under the jackboot of those more interested in managing its
decline and looting its treasury than protecting our liberty or reviving free
market growth and prosperity.

Enrollment in the food stamp
program, known as SNAP, has skyrocketed
by 70 percent since The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer starting
putting his feet on the Resolute Desk and every other piece of furniture in the
Oval Office. The number of people on
food stamps increased to 16.5 million—going from 28.2 million to 44.7 million—an
increase of 59 percent in just 3 years.

One of those food stamp
recipients is a California
“beach bum” who surfs and drinks. He
wakes up in the afternoon and eats lobster or gourmet sushi every day. He has no intention of looking for a job.

TWMDCO gave notice recently that
he will circumvent limitations on His Excellency by using his pen and his
phone.

Also in today’s news, Defense
Secretary Chuck Hagel proposed shrinking
the Army to its smallest size in 74 years, closing military bases and
making other military-wide savings as part of a broad reshaping after more than
a decade of war making it the smallest military force since just before the
United States entered World War II.

“We are repositioning to focus on
the strategic challenges and opportunities that will define our future: new
technologies, new centers of power and a world that is growing more volatile,
more unpredictable and in some instances more threatening to the United
States,” he said.

Ronald Reagan would be
incredulous. It was he who fervently
believed in peace through strength.

"We know that peace is the condition under which mankind was meant
to flourish. Yet peace does not exist of its own will. It depends on us, on our
courage to build it and guard it and pass it on to future generations. George
Washington's words may seem hard and cold today, but history has proven him
right again and again. ‘To be prepared for war,’ he said, ‘is one of the most
effective means of preserving peace.’"

The hue and cry of many of my
friends and many of the readers of this blog is deafening. We wring our hands, rend our clothing and
tear our hair out because of this administration’s incuriousness and epic
incompetence. We ask, “What have you
done to America?”

It is not too late to save
her. What will you do to prevent America
from following in the footsteps of other great civilizations that now sit on
the ash heap of history?

Saturday, February 22, 2014

I don't know how many people caught it, but the latest lame public excuse Barack the Pathetic put up about the many delays in approving the Keystone pipeline was:

“But these are how we make these decisions.”

No. They're. Not.

For those of you just joining the program, or have been in a coma for the last five years of the Obama administration, Obama has been dithering and delaying the very simple decision of permitting the Keystone pipeline to extend between the United States and Canada. Or, more precisely, the extension of the Keystone pipeline. As we noted here (A Tale of Two Pipelines) , the Keystone XL is an extension of the original Keystone pipeline, built in 2009 after receiving approval from the Bush administration, in 2008, to proceed. That phase of the pipeline was completed in June 2010.

There is no indication that it took so much as a year to get that pipeline approved, much less having the president ignore environmental study after study which found nothing to bar it.

So, if the Bush (admittedly more competent) administration could get approval in less than a year, what does Obama the Bumbler mean by

“But these are how we make these decisions"?

Well, he certainly can't mean the American people or even the American government, because both acted more quickly the first time. The only way to find even a kernel of truth in what he said, is to parse the word "we". If by "we", he means "craven, spineless politicians enthralled and beholden to special interest groups and lobbyists"...maybe.

Monday, February 17, 2014

Writing for The
New York Times, Ashley Parker hypothesizes, “As Democrats approach the
2014 midterm elections, they are grappling with an awkward reality: Their
president’s health care law—passed with no Republican votes—remains a political
liability in many states, threatening their ability to hold on to seats in the
Senate and the House.”

“The White House seems to
understand the political necessity of allowing congressional Democrats to
criticize the error-riddled rollout of the president’s health care law.”

“Many Democrats are reluctant to
let Mr. Obama campaign for them, in part because of his low approval ratings.”

“If Democrats are being forced to
spend resources in February attacking Obamacare, then this is a very grim
foreshadowing of what November will bring,” said Andrea Bozek, the
communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

One über liberal website proclaimed,
“Now if only Democrats had approved an actually good health care reform
proposal in the first place, they wouldn’t need to fall back on this pathetic
defense.”

House Majority PAC designed ads
in an effort to inoculate Democratic incumbents who parroted The World’s Most
Dangerous Community Organizer’s infamous pledge, “If you like your doctor you
can keep your doctor. Period. If you
like your healthcare plan you can keep your healthcare plan. Period.” The political action committee describes the
ads as a means to “combat smear campaigns orchestrated by conservatives”.

"The problem Democrats have
is larger than just the unpopularity of Obamacare, it's that voters no longer
trust Democratic politicians like (Louisiana Sen.) Mary Landrieu and (Alaska
Sen.) Mark Begich who have repeatedly been dishonest about the law," said Brad
Dayspring, strategist at the National Republican Senatorial Campaign. "These were all lies repeatedly told by (them) and voters can't trust them
to 'fix' the law."

These schlubs are inextricably tethered to
Obamacare and they would do well to remember the words of
George Washington who said, “It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.”

Another clarifying point was the preposterous
recommendation of a handful of George Washington University political
science professors who wanted to carve TWMDCO into Mount Rushmore National
Memorial.

In furtherance of that absurdity,
a Facebook page was created with the title of “Campaign to Put President Obama
on Mount Rushmore”. It has generated 834
likes since being put up in March of 2010.
Not exactly overwhelming.

Today, we remember the greatness—and it was greatness—of George
Washington and Abraham Lincoln whose time in office preserved the freedoms we
must never take for granted.

The presidential oath of office
is required by Article 2, Section 1 of the United States Constitution:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the
Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability,
preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

TWMDCO as an imperial president
with little regard for the legislative process who is making a mockery of the
separation of powers and what was once a well-ordered government.

In June 1985, speaking at an
endowment fundraiser for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Ronald
Reagan let his imagination take flight:

“And sometimes I want to say to those who are still in school, and who
sometimes think that history is a dry thing that lives in a book: Nothing is ever lost in that great house; some
music plays on. I have been told that late at night when the clouds are still
and the moon is high, you can just about hear the sound of certain memories
brushing by. You can almost hear, if you listen close, the whir of a wheelchair
rolling by and the sound of a voice calling out, ‘And another thing, Eleanor!’
Turn down a hall and you can hear the brisk strut of a fellow saying, ‘Bully!
Absolutely ripping!’ Walk softly now and you’re drawn to the soft notes of a
piano and a brilliant gathering in the East Room, where a crowd surrounds a
bright young president who is full of hope and laughter. I don’t know if this
is true…but it’s a story I’ve been told. And it’s not a bad one, because it
reminds us that history is a living thing that never dies. A life given in
service to one’s country is a living thing that never dies.”

Godfrey Hodgson notes in “The Myth of
American Exceptionalism” that “Americans’
declining belief in our special virtue as a world power really is connected to
our declining belief in our special virtue as a people. And the young are
leading the way. A 2013 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found
that while almost two in three Americans over 65 call themselves 'extremely
proud to be American,' among Americans under 30 it is fewer than two in five. According
to a Pew study in 2011, Millennials were a whopping 40 points less likely than
people 75 and older to call America 'the greatest country in the world.'”

Happy President’s Day
America. If you like your country can
you keep it?

Will you make the effort to prevent our nation from running
the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of other nations? You cannot be a patriot and a sheep at the
same time.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

It’s been quite a week. Snowfall on Tuesday that didn’t amount to
much followed on Wednesday by a “Snowpocalypse” that continued through late
afternoon on Thursday dumping 11 inches of white stuff where I live. My area escaped the ice
storm that caused severe damage south of me.

Friday, as you know, was
Valentine’s Day. At approximately 10:23
PM, an earthquake
struck Edgefield, SC and seismologists said the 4.1 magnitude tremblor could
be felt as far west as Atlanta and as far north as Hickory, NC. The little burg is some 60 miles north and
west of where I live.

I didn’t know about it until some
of my co-workers were discussing it the following day at work. Must’ve slept through it I guess.

I read with interest an article
about a
new treatment for sleep apnea. I was
recently diagnosed with moderate obstructive sleep apnea. I have not yet met with the sleep doctor who
will prescribe which CPAP I will be given and make the necessary adjustments to
the forced air settings that will work best for my degree of apnea.

Facebook is now offering its
users numerous
options to present their gender identity to their Facebook freaks friends
in the same way they do in the real world.
Oh joy!

Taco Bell is not a thing you plan to eat, per se. After a few
drinks or a bad day, it just sort of happens.
The company plans
to release a mobile ordering app so that almost as soon as you experience a
spontaneous craving for a Cheesy Gordita Crunch, you will be able order it with
a few taps on your Smartphone.

It’s tough when one of your best
friends starts dating a dud. Keep your mouth shut, and you feel like a bad
friend. Say something about it, and they’re liable to run back to their poorly
chosen lover’s arms quicker than ever.

Now, there’s a new way to get
that criticism out of your system anonymously. Forever NOT lets you bet on how long
your friends’ relationships will last and give the ill-fated
paramours feedback, all anonymously.

Oh well, even love unreturned has
its rainbow.

I think I’ll get back to enjoying
my slacker Sunday. The timer is going
off on my 7-layer dip with chicken. Time
to put some tortilla chips in a bowl and dig in. I think I’ll follow that up with some Caramel
Cookie Crunch gelato and join the pup on the couch and watch me some Olympics. Who gives a shit if that small, odd,
chill-faced man who likes to pose menacingly shirtless in order to seem much
taller than he actually is is boning
that gymnast who is 30 years his junior?

Friday, February 14, 2014

UPDATED 11:01 AM: I was going to make my entire
Valentine’s Day posting this Crabby Road cartoon, but I didn’t want you to
leave thinking I was some old harpy who’d soured on romance.

I decided to embed this vid of
one of my favorite musical artists. I
wanted to share with you one of my very favorite songs, “Put on Your Red Dress”, but there was no official video for that
tune. The one that’s available on
YouTube™ has just awful graphics which egregiously distracts from the lyrics so
I opted for this one. It’s called “Blessed”.

Have a wonderful, romantic, enchanting day. Tell someone you love them. There is so little time and life is not a dress rehearsal, IYKWIMAITYD.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

I have written before that my
little furkid Sophie loves her some snow.
I thought that meant all snow.
Today I learned that an icy surface is no fun at all for an itty bitty
girl.

I decided after playing out in
the snow and sledding down the hill beaucoup times that I should clean off my
car’s windshield and back glass in preparation for tomorrow’s trek to
work. I didn’t want my windshield wipers
to be frozen against the hood cowling and I certainly didn’t want big chunks of
ice to stick to the wiper blades because they won’t work properly when the road
goo flies up on the glass.

I let Sophie out to play in the
snow while I cleaned away the ice and snow.
I watched her and she wasn’t running wild doing figure-eights and doing
big circles like she has before.

These are some of the pictures I
took of her. She carefully inspected my
tracks in the snow and the steps that lead into the house. Then the wind caught my garden flag and it
startled her just a tad. Once she
figured out that was no big deal she walked along the perimeter of the chain
link fence. She headed back to the steps
when she must have caught the scent of a squirrel. Any other time she would’ve thought, “Let me
at ‘em.” Not today.

Normally, I would have to wait
out in the cold for her to run herself silly before she decided she’d had
enough playtime in the snow. Today she
wanted to go back in the house the instant I headed for the door. What a weenie.

Yesterday morning I got up around
4AM to check the weather conditions. The
only thing that was going on was a placid scene outside my window. The local weather station had forecast that
the big snowstorm was supposed to hit my area by early morning.

Since I saw no snow except what
was already on the ground from Tuesday’s snowfall, I went back to bed to catch
a few more Zzzz’s.

I reset my alarm for 8:00. When that nasty alarm went off, I got up and
looked outside my window once again.
Nothing.

I decided to go ahead and take my
meds and fix some breakfast then crank up the car to let it warm up. The weather geeks were right. The snow was coming. I looked once more out my window and saw the
snow coming down heavy. The time was
9:30.

I gave my little furkid
reassurances that I would be back that night and I locked the door and climbed
into my car.

The roads in my neighborhood were
covered with the white stuff but they were passable if you used extreme caution.

As I traveled north along the interstate,
the roads became more and more treacherous.
I drove defensively keeping a healthy distance from the few cars that
were on the road. My commute to work
usually takes a tad more than 30 minutes.
Wednesday’s commute took an hour-and-a-half.

When I got to work, I parked in
the parking deck. I figured I wouldn’t
have to scrape the snow and ice off my windshield when I got off from work. That was a smart move if I do say so myself.

We continued to receive weather
updates throughout the day and management began to let some of the workforce
leave early. There were enough
supervisors present that I requested to leave early as well. I was denied that opportunity. That was at 2:38 PM.

I continued to work despite
becoming more and more anxious about the commute home. I got wind of management allowing additional
employees to leave early. That was around
4 PM. Now, I was just angry.

I approached my management team
once more and was denied yet again. I
became resolute that I would be spending the night at work. I wasn’t happy about it, but what could I do?

Then management came to my
location and starting letting more folks to go home. I gave them the “death stare”. They relented and I was allowed to punch the
time clock at 17:41 to go home.

I caught the shuttle bus to the
parking deck, paid the attendant and got in my car.

There was virtually no one on the
road. It was still snowing and the roads
were covered. There were very few tire
tracks that you could follow, so the trip was juusssst a touch scary.

I never accelerated beyond
40mph. The skies were gray and
visibility was less than a ¼ mile. It
took me two hours to get home.

When I walked in the door, I
cranked up the heat because the wind chill was 11°. BRRRR!

I loved on my little furkid
telling her I was glad to be home safe and sound, peeled off my uniform and put
on my comfy flannel PJs. I fixed myself
a big ‘ol mug of hot chocolate. I was
hungry so I fixed myself a sammich.

Overnight, the snow changed to
sleet. There were reports of massive
power outages in South Carolina and all I could do was pray that I wouldn’t be affected.

The picture above was snapped at
7 AM this morning. That’s the garden
flag that is located by the steps where I enter my house. The little cardinal looked at me quizzically. I went inside and got some bread to throw out
so that he and his little friends could graze.

Now, it’s 9:14 AM and it has
started to rain a fine mist. It’s
currently 29° and that means that the trees are going to become heavy-laden
with ice. I am praying that the rain
stops soon because I don’t want my power to go out.

I stuck a yardstick in the snow
and there are 9 inches of the stuff on the ground. My footprints are filled in from where I walked
in last night.

I know the folks who see snow all
the time are making fun of us Southerners right now. We don’t get enough snow where I live for the
municipalities to invest in a lot of snow removal equipment. I also know you guys make fun of us for
making a mad rush to the grocery store for bread and milk.

I called off of work this morning. It just isn’t worth it to make the attempt to
get to work. So, I’m going to fix myself
some hash browns, scrambled eggs and sausage and a couple of pieces of toast. Then I’m going to put on my ski bibs and
mittens.

I’m going to go into the attic
and pull down my 50-year-old Flexible Flyer and sled down the hill a couple of
hundred times. I’m going to enjoy the “Snowpocalypse”. You only live once. You take your joy where you can find it.

UPDATE 9:37AM: The misty
rain has changed over to snow again. It’s
heavy. Really, really heavy. I’m going to throw another log or two on the
fire. I just checked the Accuweather
forecast—they are saying we’re in for another 3 inches of snow and it’s
expected to taper off by late afternoon.

I feel a snow angel coming
on. Have great day and stay safe out
there everyone.

Here's my Flexible Flyer. Photo taken around 2:00 PM today.

UPDATE 2:38 PM: The snow has
stopped just as the weatherman predicted.
My home weather station is currently reading 39°. The icicles that were hanging off my easements
have melted and the fat, fluffy snow that covered the trees has begun to fall
to the ground.

My local weather dude says all the
counties in my area will remain under a Winter Storm Warning until 6 PM. The sun is trying desperately to peek through
the gray, cloudy skies. This evening the temps are going to drop down
into the 20s and all this glorious snow is going to refreeze.

He said, "The main roads
look good, but getting to the main roads from your neighborhood is an
adventure. If you don't have a 4-wheel drive, you're not going to make it! Travel this evening, overnight and in the
early morning hours is still strongly discouraged!”

I’ve got 11 inches of snow. The sledding was great. I’m super-tired now. My neighbor, Roy, thought I was nuts at my
age to go sledding. I got him back by
reminding him it’s good to have fun. Fun
makes you feel young. He laughed and
said I was right.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

The obligatory panic over the
approaching winter storm has officially begun, raising questions over whether tonight’s
rivalry game between Carolina and Duke at the Dean Smith Center will be played.

As of this posting, the ACC
policy on postponements states that games will be played as scheduled as long a
both teams, the officials and essential game personnel can get to the game
safely.

The game is scheduled to air on
ESPN at 9 PM ET. It’s a home game for
the Tarheels.

I requested time off from work
today and tomorrow so that I could go behind enemy lines and cheer on my
beloved Blue Devils.

The plan was to travel to Chapel
Hill and take a limo to the game. The
advantage, of course, is to avoid the chaos of returning to your car in an
overcrowded parking lot and waiting an inordinate amount of time to exit. It was an excellent plan.

“Snowpocalyse” has changed all
that. I’m sure you’ve heard by now that
the South is about to get socked by a snowstorm of catastrophic proportions.

I have written many times that I
am considered key and essential personnel and a first responder. As such, I’ve had to cancel my already
approved time off from work.

Clearly, it would be foolish for
me to risk travelling the distance from my home to Chapel Hill to see the game
in person. I am, therefore, relegated to
optimistically leaving work at 8:30 PM (in the midst of “Snowpocalyse”) and
making it to my house in time to watch some of the game on television.

Duke is ranked 11th in
the AP Top 25 and the USA Today Coaches Poll.
Carolina isn’t even in the Top 25.
In ACC standings Duke is 8-3 and Carolina 6-4.

Carolina is hoping to keep their
winning streak alive. I’m hoping Duke
will crush their hopes.

Two schools separated by 8 miles
and two shades of blue, Coach K, Tobacco Road, Cameron Crazies. The fans are
passionate, the teams successful, the games almost always down to the buzzer. These
are two of the four winningest teams in history, going at it twice a year (and
once more in the ACC tournament if we're lucky). This is what college hoops is
all about.

This game should be fantastic. The rivalry between the two schools is
legendary. After Duke whips the Heels
they should be in good shape to take on Syracuse on February 22nd and exact
revenge when The Orange come to Cameron Indoor Stadium.UPDATE 8:58 PM: “Snowpocalypse” has forced the postponement of tonight’s game. The make-up game will be played on February 20th. Perhaps because Dick Vitale was stranded at the airport was part of the reason the game was called off.

Pls be safe in Triangle area - ice /snow unreal -at TAC terminal in Raleigh - having tough time finding a ride to Dean Dome

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Shirley Temple sang and danced
her way into the hearts of America. Her
movies were beloved by all who saw them.
She was one of the most popular child stars in Hollywood history. She was “America’s little darling”.

As a young girl, I watched her
movies on Saturdays and Sundays when the local television channels would run
them. I’m not ashamed to say that when I
have a legendary bad day I sometimes sit down to watch one of her movies to lift
my spirits.

My mom was obsessed with giving
me permanents because she wanted my hair to be curly like hers.

Unlike the child stars of today,
Shirley Temple’s life was never scandal-ridden or drug-addled. Her life was one of remarkable achievements
including ambassadorships to Ghana and Czechoslovakia.

She made some 43 feature movies,
including "The Little Colonel," "Poor Little Rich Girl,"
"Heidi" and "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm," in 10 years,
starring with big-name actors like Randolph Scott, Lionel Barrymore and Jimmy
Durante.

Though we have lost a most
notable celebrity today it is reassuring to know that she peacefully passed
away at her Woodside, California home from natural causes. Shirley Temple was 85.

We know our economy is stronger when we reward an honest day’s work with honest wages. But today, a full-time worker making the minimum wage earns $14,500 a year. Even with the tax relief we’ve put in place, a family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line. That’s wrong. That’s why, since the last time this Congress raised the minimum wage, nineteen states have chosen to bump theirs even higher.

Tonight, let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour. This single step would raise the incomes of millions of working families.

First, let's consider Obama's imaginary worker: "...full-time...making the minimum wage". Does such a creature even exist?? One of my predictions for 2014 was:

The 29 hour work week will become the de facto standard for the majority of new hires in 2014

According to a report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), some additional 2.5 million full time jobs will be lost, liberating them from the need to work, according to most good liberals. As more and more jobs become part time, my prediction is well on its way to coming to pass.

He goes on...

"a family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line. That’s wrong."

Yeah it is! Who in their right mind would start a family and have children if they are working a job only pulling down minimum wage? And if there is such a thing as a full time worker, making just minimum wage, sole provider for the family, the percentage of workers meeting this criteria must be approaching zero.
And before I hearing the bleating about a lack of compassion, we have welfare, food stamps and any number of programs to assist those unfortunate few.

Workers (and I use the term loosely) who receive minimum wage are primarily unskilled, without experience, possibly someone's first job. Employer paid health care benefits were originally devised as a way to get around wage controls and to reward valuable employees with the equivalent of a higher wage. The reality is today, that employers are reducing the ranks of those paid lower wages in order to avoid the expense of government mandated health care (for less productive employees).

Employers want to pay productive workers as much as they can. When I was a hiring manager, I sought to start my people at the highest possible salary, and grant raises and provide bonuses to retain the workers I trained. The idea that all businesses want to do is exploit their workers and pay them as little as possible, is a liberal old wives' tale. Those unfortunate enough to work for such an employer are free to improve their education and skills, as they garner experience, making them more desirable to those enlightened employers who know that they succeed along with their employees.

"In 2012, there were 3.6 million hourly paid workers in the United States with wages at or below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. These workers made up 4.7 percent of the 75.3 million workers age 16 and over who were paid at hourly rates.".

Less than five percent? Weren't the Obamabots recently all bleating about how insignificant the five million people who were losing their private insurance because they were 'less than five per cent' of the work force?
Closed captioning for the Irony (and Math) Impaired: If five million people losing their insurance are insignificant, then 3.6 million is less significant than that. You can't have it both ways!

So, if an insignificant number of people, according to good liberals, being caused financial hardship because their affordable insurance was cancelled, why should we be more upset over a lesser and transient number of people who will be paid minimum wage until such time as they have the experience and skills to earn more?

Also, working less than full time increases...what was it the President calls it? "Income inequality"! Seems to me that even if we raised the minimum wage, there's going to be 'income inequality' between those working forty hours a week and those only working twenty nine! And between those working twenty nine hours a week and those who are unemployed... That whole pesky math thing again!

As Obamacare crashes and burns, the old minimum wage canards are being hauled out to distract people from the real economy killer, as government tries to take over one sixth of the economy. It is an election year, and the Democrats have nothing to run on but fear itself. They are counting on their supporters being math impaired enough to believe all the doublespeak they utter. That and trying to pull as many un-Constitutional extensions and delays of Obamacare mandates out of their hats, at least until after the midterm and 2016 elections.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

During my 61-and-a-half
years of life I have always been a nationalist.
I have been devoted to my country, pride-filled and content in the
belief that America was the greatest country in the world. I have never been a jingoist.

Over those many years,
the Olympics were something I watched with great interest because it showcased
the American athlete. No greater pride
was felt than when an American athlete mounted the podium at the medals
ceremony and the national anthem played to the assembled crowd in the stadium
and the watching world.

To witness an American
cry during the rousing anthem or to see them wrap themselves in Old Glory when
they bested their competition raised my sense of pride.

America throughout its
history has always been a force for good around the world.

When I arrived home
after a hard day at work, I turned on my television and caught the last 30
minutes or so of the Opening Ceremony. I
sat there and watched Putin’s revisionist whitewashed history play out
inside Fisht Olympic Stadium including the glorification of a giant hammer and
sickle; the unadulterated icons of communism, the theories of Karl Marx and
Fredrick Engels and the butchery of Uncle Joe Stalin.

As a young girl growing
up, I did something for which I am deeply ashamed. Born in 1952, just 7 years after the end of
World War II, history classes taught school children about World War II. Invariably the lessons would include
discussions about Nazi Germany. Every
American knew about the atrocities committed by Hitler and it was widely held
that every German citizen knew about what was happening to the Jews.

Since 1966, post-war
historians reckoned that “most Germans did not know” precisely about the “evolving
terror of Hitler’s Holocaust” because the Nazis seduced an unwilling or passive
public. Robert Gellately, professor in
Holocaust history at Clark University wrote, “For
decades my generation had been told that so much of the terror had been carried
out in complete secrecy.”

What I did during those
history lessons in school was hold my tongue.
You see, my mother was German. My
dad fell in love with her while he was stationed in Berlin as part of the Berlin
Airlift and was part of the constabulary responsible for guarding Rudolph Hess in Spandau
Prison in West Berlin. I held my tongue
because I did not want my classmates to think my mother was a Nazi. You see, the hatred for Nazis was towering
and it was deserved, but my mom was not a Nazi and didn’t deserve to be hated. I had no way of countering the hatred. I just wanted to protect her. I felt trapped and I wound up denying my
mother. I deeply regret having done
that.

After they were married
he brought her home and arranged for her mother to join them. I grew up hearing stories of how elderly men
were shot and killed while trying to stop Red Army soldiers from gang-raping
their wives. My grandmother would cry as
she recounted how “the mongrels” would pillage and plunder the homes that had
been turned into rubble destroying what was left of the furniture smashing it with
bayonets and rifle butts. She spoke of
one incident where her neighbor’s home was invaded and the Red Army soldiers
pulled a faucet from the wall to take back to the Soviet Union thinking it
would bring running water.

The movie, A Woman in Berlin, reviewed
in the LA Times
by Kenneth Turan and described far more vividly by Andrew Roberts for The
Daily Mail, authenticated the stories I was told about as a child.

What does all this have
to do with the Opening Ceremony and that hammer and sickle? It’s about the obfuscation of the truth—Yezhovshchina—the
deaths of 20 million Russians, labor camps, manufactured famines, torture and a
complete toll of bloodshed that will likely never be known.

What NBC did by televising
that segment of the ceremony was to cover up the atrocities of which Soviet
Russia is guilty in the manner and style of Walter Duranty who notoriously lied
about Stalin’s infamies.

The New York Times Moscow correspondent wrote 13 articles that were
complete works of fiction. So egregious
was the palter that the Pulitzer Prize Board was asked to revoke the prize
awarded him. They did not because
they were goddamned cowards.

NBC further propagandized “the
evil empire” by creating a lead-in
to the Opening Ceremony by hiring Peter Dinklage to narrate a pabulum piece in
which the audience was lulled into a belief that the images they were seeing
was one of industry, of construction, of building upward to a bright new future
of hope and change leading to a perfect society where all comrades are equal
and flowering in the glory of a Utopian collective.

“The towering presence, the
empire that ascended to affirm a colossal footprint. The revolution that
birthed one of modern history’s pivotal experiments. But if politics has long
shaped our sense of who they are, it’s passion that endures. As a more reliable
right to their collective heart. What they build in aspirations, lifted by
imagination. What they craft, through the wonder of every last detail. How magical
the fusion of sound and movement can be. How much a glass of distilled
perfection and an overflowing table can matter. Discover the Russian people
through these indelible signatures. Discover what we share with them through
the games that open here tonight.”

It is, in fact, a failed
political system, a legacy of gulags, Chernobyl nuclear nightmares, corruption
and oppression of the highest order.

Sally Jenkins rightly
noted, “The most expensive Olympics in history is partly a Potemkin
village, an elaborate facade built to impress foreign passersby and to enhance
the image of a small, odd, chill-faced man who likes to pose menacingly
shirtless in order to seem much taller than he actually is.”

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

There was an episode of the old Twilight Zone, back before many of you were born, in which a man owned a car, and whoever owned that car could not tell a lie, but was compelled to always tell the truth. The episode ended when Nikita Khrushchev, then leader of the U.S.S.R., drove off in his new car. That was fantasy. My fantasy is to have Barack Obama hooked up to a lie detector or shot up with a little Sodium Pentathol (or both), and ask him a few select questions about the last five years. About Fast and Furious, Benghazi and the IRS for starters.

His interview with O'Reilly on Super Bowl Sunday, was notable only insofar as you recognize that Obama did not give a single straight answer to any of the questions directed at him, and some of his evasions were lies as well. Probably the hardest thing to do, in giving the President a polygraph, would be establishing a baseline of when he is telling the truth.